Kahli stared down at Lloyd and blinked a few times. She didn't really know what she'd been expecting to hear from him when she finished spinning her yarn, but it definitely wasn't an invitation to team up and bring forth the apocalypse together. That was so unexpected to her and it seemed so absurd that, after Lloyd clarified that he genuinely did want to team up with her to end the world, all she could do was laugh in his face.

"What? What's so funny?"

But Kahli couldn't control herself. Here was this small alien man, he'd crashed a meteor into the downtown of her hometown, he'd proclaimed he'd come to her planet to destroy it, and now he was asking her to help him do it. The whole thing just seemed... ridiculous, and she couldn't help but laugh. It didn't help that looking at him, to her, felt in many ways similar to looking down at an angry toddler.

"Stop laughing at me! This is a serious proposition, and in many ways, it's almost like me offering you a huge cheat code, a get out of jail free card! Your whole world is doomed either way! Wouldn't you rather come out alive? I can appreciate whatever awesome power you're hiding in that monster's system, that much I can agree with. But you've got to respect me as a fellow fan of the doomsday! I came here in my meteor to usher forth your world's doom! Doesn't that put us at about the same level here, although I still must stress that I am much more powerful than you?"

Kahli really couldn't stand to hear this alien guy keep going on about how powerful he was. Her thought was, who cared?? She was even a little frustrated with him at this point, because he'd had the gall to assume she'd want to team up with him! She was just trying to scare him off! She just wanted him to go away! He was weird, and he was strange, and she didn't like his attitude. He kept going on and on about wanting to destroy the world, and that was just obnoxious. Plus, she'd tried to tell him more about the prophecy, indeed originally she'd tried to tell him the truth instead of a bunch of concocted bullshit, but he hadn't been interested in the truth! He'd shut down her real story in favor of her bullshit story! Kahli just couldn't bare it! She had to do something to get this weird alien away from her fast.

"So? I mean, what do you think, Kahli?"

Without thinking, reacting wholly on impulse, Kahli reared back her big, left foot and then in a flash punted the vile little man into the air, sending him soaring through the sky and up, up, over the building and back towards his giant, crashed meteor until she couldn't see him at all, and he was but a dark speck in the distance. She could hear him crying out swears of impunity, but Kahli didn't care. She didn't want to associate with this jerk, regardless of the benefit. He was too obnoxious to consider some sort of diabolical partnership with, she couldn't sink to that level.

Kahli's next impulse was to run away as fast as she could. If Lloyd was as powerful as he said he was, or even really half as powerful, he was going to cause some serious trouble for her, and indeed might just go ahead and kill her after what she'd done. Unless he was scared of her, or saw her as an equal, or maybe even wanted her approval. And it was all Kahli could do to hope that her stretching of the truth had already accomplished such a feat. Regardless, her impulse was to run away, but before she could, she had to notice a familiar feeling in her lower back. She was ready to level up!

[Level up]

[Level up]

[Congratulations, you've reached level 18]

Level 18? Well, that was nice. Kahli was slowly but surely catching up to Taubitha, although who knew how many walls Taubitha had punched so far. She might have been level 33 already, for all Kahli knew. Regardless, there was no point in ruminating on Kalhi's obnoxious ex-friend and how high her level might have been. Especially considering that Kahli had beaten her regardless of level fairly recently.

Kahli waited, hoping to see a notification about her availability for a [skill], but she saw nothing. She was disappointed, but time was still frozen. Something had to be happening.

[You have 10 attribute points to spend]

[If you do not spend these points, you will not be able to acquire new attribute points to spend until you spend them]

Unauthorized tale usage: if you spot this story on Amazon, report the violation.

Kahli wasn't sure what the system was going on about. So, she had [attribute] points to spend. What were [attribute] points? How did she spend them? What exactly was she supposed to do in this situation?

[Clarification: You need to open the attribute section of your character sheet to spend attribute points.]

Had Kahli just gotten a personalized message from the system?

[Clarification: Hello! I'm Clarification, the call-and-response agent implemented within your system to respond to personalized support requests.]

Kahli was a little confused. It almost felt like the system was introducing itself to her. It seemed a little... unnecessary.

[Clarification: Well, Clarification is a new feature of systems, and indeed to be truthful it is also still in development. However, considering your acquisition of a system at an advanced age, and the lack of older system users without system experience such as yourself in your current era, you've been identified as an ideal candidate for Clarification's beta testing!]

Kahli inwardly balked a bit. Was this clarification calling her old? She didn't even have living wood covering her face yet!

[Clarification: Do you have a support request?]

Kahli did have a support request. She wanted to know how to spend her attribute points!

[Clarification: Of course! Your system is configured to operate off of intuitive thoughts and impulses in order to maximize efficiency and time to operate. Simply think about opening up your attributes and the system will do the rest.]

That simple, huh? Kahli thought about opening her [attributes].

[Attributes]

[INT: 5]

[STM: 10]

[CHAR: 11]

[DEX: 10]

[STR: 8]

Well, here it was. All of Kahli's [attributes]. First things first, she desperately needed to level up her [int], because having it at 5 was just embarrassing. As for the rest of her [attributes], Kahli was a little confused. She still wasn't entirely sure how these [attributes] affected her or which one was the most important.

[Clarification: Attributes effect your experience in the world around you. People who've had systems for longer than you know this well, and have had the opportunity to spend attribute points almost every time they level up. Additionally, you can also acquire new attributes, though usually this comes at defined intervals specific to the types of experiences you've had while running under a system. For now, you have the base attributes and the maximum of ten attribute points to spend.]

[Did clarification help? Please think yes or no to help improve system clarifications.]

Kahli didn't like the idea of participating in data mining, so she didn't respond to the secondary notice from her system. However, she did find attributes fairly interesting. She wondered how many other [attributes] people could have and what some of the people she'd run into had as [attributes]. Was obnoxious available as an [attribute]?

Regardless, Kahli was sick of being functionally frozen in time and as thus went ahead and spent her [attribute] points.

[Attributes]

[INT: 9]

[STM: 12]

[CHAR: 12]

[DEX: 12]

[STR: 9]

There, Kahli was happy. She felt a little more balanced out with these [attributes] than she had before. She was interested to see how this might affect her conscious experiences.

Time started again as she wrapped up her leveling. It was a little exhausting to have to level up twice in a row, but it was nowhere near as bad as when she first started leveling and blew through her whole backlog of levels. Still, Kahli's legs felt a little weak and she was slightly apprehensive about the idea of having to function as a tauman being again now that it was through. It almost seemed like her ears had popped! Maybe it was extra exhausting because she'd added all those built up [attribute] points. Yes, that had to be it.

Kahli looked over, to see the faraway form of Lloyd clambering to his feet. She was certain he was furious. Kahli needed to get away from this creepy alien guy before he tried to do something really sinister to her and Froufrou. Sure, Froufrou might've been the Harbinger of Doom, but what if Lloyd had powers beyond a prophetic scroll? Kahli didn't think that was likely, despite his gloating, but even though the alien man had seemingly respected her after she told him the abridged story of her beast's origin she was cautious about the idea that Froufrou could possibly get wiped out.

Worse still, there had really been nothing in the prophecy about whoever [paired] with the Harbinger of Doom becoming immortal. Which meant that as far as Kahli was concerned, it didn't matter whether Froufrou was the beast she thought she was or not - Kahli could probably still die, anyway!

So Kahli went with her old first impulse and ran as far away from Lloyd and his huge meteor as she could. It was hard to run through the streets of downtown Gifflenberg with the thick dust and fog blotting out the sky and horizon, blanketing the air in harmful pollutants. Still, she had to try! Kahli summoned up her rock and kicked it through the dusty air again and again, using it to somewhat filter and smash her way through as she headed towards what she hoped to find as shelter.

"Ow!" cried a pained voice.

Kahli had... hit someone with her rock?

She ran over to the source of the voice and knelt down.

"Oh my gods, I'm so sorry! I didn't mean to hit you!"

It was a man, lying on his back. He was in some sort of strange, metal suit. "It is okay, I am just in terrible pain. It will pass."